


A Family Circle

by Grace_d



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Child Abuse, F/M, Family, In The Woods, Reapings, Tumblr Prompt, hunter Everdeens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 10:43:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20445839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grace_d/pseuds/Grace_d
Summary: Prompt 2: “Hey, hey, calm down. They can’t hurt you anymore.” from  @rosegardeninwinterPeeta Mellark has never spoken to Katniss Everdeen since the incident, but when Effie Trinket pulls both their names from the Reaping bowl, he finds himself standing next to the girl who once saved his life, and gave him hope for the future.A brief oneshot for the tumblr prompt “Hey, hey, calm down. They can’t hurt you anymore.”Rating: T for descriptions of child abuse (physical and emotional) and injury





	A Family Circle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosegardeninwinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosegardeninwinter/gifts).

Every child in the Districts imagines a day where their name is read from the Reaping slip. In One and Two, I imagine the children dream of it with reverence, a rush of giddiness then a rise of savage resolve. 

For the rest of us, we imagine the sick helplessness of the moment we become a tribute. We practiced it once, some kids from the wrestling team, on a Friday after training. It was a morbid kind of excitement once we decided to do it. Stupid fun. For stupid kids. 

Kain stood on a bench, and his affected Effie impersonation made us laugh. But when he started calling names, when the older boys started advising us how to stand, how to hold our heads, how to hide weaknesses that the commentators or Careers could pounce on, it wasn’t fun anymore. It wasn’t stupid. The laughter dissolved into nervous giggles, then tense silence, pinched mouths and rounded shoulders shuffling in the locker room. We never tried it again. We never even spoke of it again. 

We buried it in the desperate hope that it would be the closest we ever came to being Reaped, because all only lasting impression the exercise left was one of futility. 

When Effie Trinket calls my name and gestures me to the stage, I remember none of this. I feel nothing comparable to the locker room. Instead, my stomach surges with a vicious satisfaction. 

My life no longer belongs to my mother. 

It belongs to the Capitol now, but after sixteen years at home I can’t say that’s worse. 

The feeling lasts me to the stairs, but as I look up them it floods away with the bitter taste of adrenaline and salt of threatening tears. Each step seems larger than the last. I tune into my body, as if this were a match. I almost let loose a wild laugh, because it is. It will be. A match to the death. I clamp it down by rolling my shoulders, centre them over my hips, get a little low. A ready position. Stance of a fighter. It’s sickeningly easy to get onto the stage. 

Effie Trinket comes towards me, and for a moment I fear she’s going to fall into my arms as she tips about on her ridiculous green heels. I wonder if her wig would fall all the way off if she did. I imagine it bouncing down the stairs like a tumble weed, and wonder what colour her real hair is. The thought of her white painted eyelashes blinking underneath a fall of regular brown hair disturbs me more than her horribly clashing outfit. Instead, she stops safely on her own. 

“Well.” She reaches out, then pulls her hands back, then reaches out again to tap both her hands against my shoulders. “Aren’t you lovely?” 

The approval in her voice is grotesque, a slide to it that reminds me of my mother’s tone, not three months ago, when she discovered that the third son of a baker did have desirable attributes to the daughters of the merchants in her circle. That she could use me further to her position in the town. All it would take on my part would be a calculated accident with the girl she selected for me. 

I would prefer the mines. 

I would prefer the Games. 

I’m tempted to turn back to the crowd, to search out my mother, to smile at her knowing that I’m going somewhere she can no longer control, when a flash of silver catches my eye. I look to see Haymitch Abernathy, Victor of District Twelve, my soon to be mentor, draped over his chair, swigging from a flask. 

For all the world he looks wasted, drunk for the Reaping ceremony as usual. I’m sure I would drink through an introduction to the children about to die on my watch too. But his grey eyes meet mine and I realise why he caught my attention, overrode the cameras and the staring crowd. His eyes are red rimmed, but there’s a beady calculation there that I don’t entirely trust. We narrow our eyes at one another. 

The Mayor beside him gives me a sad sort of half nod and looks away. I don’t know why I expected more acknowledgement than that, after years of delivering bread to his doorstop before breakfast. When will I stop hoping people will care about me more than they do? Maybe today, when it’s been decided I will die. 

I’m working through it all when Effie steers me to stand facing the crowd. I see my brothers then, huddling together and looking stricken, my father pale. My mother looks sour. I don’t have to imagine the hidden pinches and threats she’s delivering to about what she’ll do if they snivel. Why shouldn’t they cry? Why shouldn’t I cry? 

I have never thought of crying as a cowardly act. I always thought it was freeing. To own how you really feel. 

I could cry. 

I _could_ cry. 

If I don’t care about how the camera’s perceive me, if I don’t try to fight the idea I’m never coming back, I can just cry. It won’t matter for a second what my mother thinks. The Capitol viewers can go to hell. I’m dead anyway, and apart from a five-minute goodbye, I’m free. 

I could be Peeta for real. 

Just myself, how I want to be. 

There’s a smattering of applause, and I realise it’s for me. I glance up then, seeing my face magnified hugely across the square. And I’m almost smiling. There’s a sort of relief on my face. 

It shutters when Effie reaches for the bowl again. I forgot about that. That a girl still needs to be selected. I watch her circle her fingers around the slips, how they flutter under her fingertips. The end of my life is fine, but now it sinks in there will be twenty-three others. The bowl is so close. I could overturn it right now. What would they do to me if I did? Would it matter? Die now or later? 

Effie plucks a slip from the bowl. My indecision has made me too slow, and the chance is gone. 

She calls the name, her voice cloying in the air. 

“Primrose Everdeen.” 

_Oh no._ I think._ Not her._

I find her immediately from the way everyone parts around her. She’s a tiny thing, standing with the twelve’s. She steps forward in a pale blue reaping outfit she’s not yet grown into, twisting her long blonde braid around her fingers. 

Ever though I have never spoken to Primrose before, I feel like I know her. I see her sweet face pressed up against the bakery window sometimes, see her happily skip along the cobblestones. I see her sister Katniss shepherd her down the pathway from school, gentle hand on her shoulder, looking as lovely as the sun and moon next to one another. 

There’s no soft smile on Katniss Everdeen’s face now, as she pushes through the crowd towards her sister. There’s only fear and panic. 

“Prim!” she screams. “Prim!” 

The Peacekeepers head her off and I tense, as though I could do something from up here. They grab Katniss under the armpits and heave her small frame backwards, but she kicks and hisses at them like a wildcat. 

“I volunteer!” She yells, twisting out from her guards. “I volunteer!” She calls again, as if the entire square wasn’t stunned silent the first time. 

_Why her?_ I despair, and realise that split second of freedom I just experienced will be the last I ever feel. Katniss walks on steady feet up the stairs and comes to stand beside me. With Katniss by my side, I will be in hell every second until my death. 

Effie makes an inane comment about Primrose, and my fingernails cut into my palms. How dare she talk about Katniss’s family. Effie asks for applause, and this time none comes. Instead, the district as one raises three fingers to their lips and extends them towards her. A gesture of respect and love. One that I have only seen once before, at Katniss’s father’s funeral two years ago. Even from my place in the back I could see the devastation in the Everdeen women’s posture. Katniss was never the same after that. 

Haymitch yells then, getting up in close the camera’s. “More spunk than you!” He points into the camera, before dramatically overbalancing and tumbling from the stage. He wasn’t nearly drunk enough to do that a moment ago, I’m sure. I glance aside to Katniss and see her swallowing hard. A distraction then. 

Mayor Undersee begins to read the Treaty of Treason, and I recite the words in my head as he does. Not because I believe them, not because I agree, but because I have to keep my mind on something, to keep myself focused on anything but the girl next to me. 

I have spent entirely too many minutes of my life trying not to be focused on the girl next to me. We aren’t friends though. Katniss has few friends, because she is blunt and aloof, but also because she needs no one but her family. I have no friends, just people I lie to, and people I lie a little less to. We aren’t friends, but I have watched her. 

She probably hasn’t thought twice about me since we spoke. She will now, at least once, to decide how to kill me. Katniss can kill things. I’ve seen her do it. I wonder if she ever thinks of the event, hardly even a minor footnote in her life, but I do. I think about it all the time. 

It was during the most hopeless moments of my childhood. When I was twelve, just after our first Reaping. Sick of the hot hours of bakery work and driven by some euphoric relief of not being called onto the stage, I had stolen from the bakery office. A pencil and some old invoice slips. 

Resources were getting tight I knew, with my parents beginning to allocate a small allowance, pennies here and there, to my brothers, so they could start courting. That money went to creating advantageous matches for our family, and wasn’t really for my brother’s fun, but they seemed happy when they came home from their dates. I was jealous. Annoyed. I had been working just as hard as everyone else and I thought I deserved something too. 

My mother had caught me curled under the apple tree, sketching away, completely oblivious. I was trying to draw a beetle before it crept from my sight, focused on the roll of it’s tiny feet. Mother was furious. She had ripped up my paper, stomped on the beetle. It smeared into the dirt under her heel and I was terrified, fear soaked down to my bones. 

I started crying, trying to stutter out an explanation as she yanked me upright and out of the yard. I remember wriggling in her hard grasp, but I was small for my age at twelve, yet to grow. I was deathly afraid of what would happen if she got me inside. Once I was hidden from the curious eyes of our neighbours. 

Seeing children disciplined was common in Town, with families taking pride in how well behaved their offspring were. We have to maintain standards, they would say, as if it kept us above the Seam somehow. Like scrubbing down our shabby shop fronts, it was all about appearances. My mother is very concerned about those. 

She had always been strict, and cruel, with a sharp word or bruising pinch when we disappointed her. But she had a quiet containment about her, always the sense that something was being held back. I had seen her anger uncontrolled once, when she had whipped my oldest brother. I don’t even remember what he had done, but I remember the whistle of the belt. 

I saw in her eyes that same sort of fury unleashing then, and I was desperate to get away. I squealed like a stuck pig as she dragged me inside, past my father in the kitchens and up the staircase. Somehow, I managed to twist free. 

She had slapped me then, short and sharp across the face. Astonished, I’d flung myself away, forgetting the stairs. I hit them with violent speed. I remember only parts from there. A splitting pain in my ribs, stumbling along an alley way, falling, my hands digging in coal dust. 

And then I’d found the fence line. I had walked along it until I came across a section burrowed out, half hidden by the bushes. Hunters and teenagers would go beyond the fence, for illegal hunting and mischief. I had gone too, scrambling beneath it. Within an instant to my mind, I was deep in the woods. I don’t know why, but I just kept walking. Maybe I was trying to run away. Maybe I was still fleeing my mother. Maybe I was just heavily concussed so there was no reason to anything I was doing. 

It was cool under the trees, and the sun had cast a dappled light across the forest floor. Eventually I had to rest my aching body, curling up with soft moss against my face. It soothed my smarting cheek, and I closed my eyes for just a second. 

I awoke to husky growls. In the late afternoon light, I saw a pack of dogs slinking towards me, noses to the ground. I thought it was a hallucination at first, until one of the dogs, grey with pits ripped into the side of its head, looked up at me. I screamed then, rolled to my feet, and ran. Snapping teeth and baying followed me and instantly I knew I wouldn’t outrun them. 

I was tempted to lay down and let them get me, my side burning and pain stabbing up my left leg every time it hit the ground. But I saw a low hanging branch to the side and threw myself at it, hauling myself into a tree. I had huddled there, barely out of reach when they jumped, watching the saliva fling from their teeth. I nearly shook myself apart, my whole body aching. There was blood on my arms, and I could smell vomit. I couldn’t even remember throwing up. 

For the second time that day I was sure I was going to die. I rested my pounding head against the tree trunk, heavy and so tired of my life. I was about to fall from the branch to be pulled apart by rabid dogs and I wasn’t sure I minded. No one would miss me, no one really cared, I could just let go. At least I wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore. 

And then, someone was shouting. A dog yelped and fell, an arrow protruding from its side. The pack reeled around, then a second one fell, kicking and whining. 

“GO! Get lost!” A young voice yelled, and a girl stepped out from the undergrowth into view. 

She was tiny amongst the brush, holding a bow with a long dark braid which I would have recognised anywhere. It was Katniss Everdeen, because who else would be out here, armed and yelling at dogs without fear. 

I had noticed Katniss before, noticed her all the time, she’d been in my class since school started. Everyone knew she hunted with her father in the woods, but she also had singing voice that made the birds stop to listen to her, and she fascinated me. But for every second I thought of her, I spent two forcing those thoughts from my head, convincing myself to not hope for hopeless things. 

“GO! GET!” She yelled again, as loud as she could, stomping her feet. 

The dogs turned tail and ran, leaving two bodies on the ground, slowly leaking blood. It was a gory sight. She walked up to them, arrow still notched in her bow. She kicked one in the side, circling the dead dogs as if surveying her work. 

“You can come down now.” She said without looking up. 

I stared down at her in disbelief. How had she even known I was there? Did she specifically come to rescue me? A second later she looked up at me, squinting. Immediately her eyes widened, and I realised I was still clinging to the tree trunk, shaking violently. 

“You look terrible.” She said, in that direct way she has. 

I let out a strangled laugh. 

“Hey, hey, calm down. They can’t hurt you anymore.” She walked closer to the tree. “It’s okay, they’re gone now.” 

I was laughing and crying all at once when her father stepped into view, snot running down my face unchecked. The grazes on my arms stung and my face ached, and beautiful Katniss Everdeen was talking to me for the first time ever and I was a mess. 

Her father paused when he reached us. He was tall and strong, dark haired and he looked like a hunter, like a victor. He chastised Katniss gently for running off, then praised her marksmanship in the next breath. He leaned down to give a playful tug on her braid before reaching for me in the tree. 

“Let’s have a look at you, young Peeta.” He said as he hoisted me down. His voice was just as gentle when talking with me as it had been talking with his daughter. I don’t even know how he knew my name. 

He set me on my feet and I whimpered, my vision going narrow and ears rushing. I felt his large hands on my shoulders then I fell into blackness. 

When I awoke next I smelled herbs and flowers, felt sticky bandages on my arms and face. I was being carried on the hip like a toddler, hugged in close, head on the shoulder. Everything hurt. The man carrying me began singing softly and a second voice joined in. I recognised this one, clear and sweet. Katniss. Which meant her father was carrying me. I could see Katniss swinging her hand in his on his other side, the three of us together. 

I closed my eyes again, felt the vibrations of his song against my own chest. 

It was peaceful, and I imagined that it was my family. A family that sang together, with a sweet mother that patched up scrapes, a strong father who could shoot down deer, and children that ran in the woods and sang. I pretended to sleep, afraid to disrupt it. 

Eventually we came to the back door of the bakery, and Katniss’s father rapped his knuckles loudly. I heard the door swing open, with a rush of heat and the smell of sourdough. 

“He tripped down the stairs.” I heard my father say. 

Katniss’s fathers’ arms tightened around me, pushing painfully against my bruises. I relished it during the seemingly infinite pause. 

“It never happens again.” Katniss’s father told mine. “Never.” 

I’m not ashamed to say I wrapped my arms around him then, clinging as he tried to hand me off to my own. He smelled like pine and leather, and I wanted desperately to stay with him. But then I heard the click of my mother’s footsteps and I let go. 

That night when I tucked myself into bed, well before my brothers got home, I hummed the song under my breath. I had always known that not all families were like my family, and I felt now I had proof. I had hope. 

I started a list that night, of the things I would have with my own family. When things got hard, I would hum the valley song in my head, and think about what kind of father I would be. A good one, a strong one and a gentle one. You could be all those things at once. An odd past-time for a teenage boy, perhaps, but one that gave me comfort. One that made me feel less alone. 

It took a week before I could attend school again, my bruising was so bad. When I saw Katniss she looked coolly past me, and I felt a strange sort of shame, so I never approached her. Her father made a point to acknowledge me ever time he traded at the bakery from that point onwards. Whether it was for my benefit, or a warning to my father I didn’t know. I missed it acutely when he died. 

I can’t fathom how Katniss misses him. I had watched them, the Everdeen family, as they held hands, sang and laughed. Katniss’s mother was from Town, blonde and fair, and they made a lovely matched pair, day and night. Their world looked like a world I could never imagine. Their small family unit like a dancing circle, full of light touches and laughter. 

To this day, I can’t shake the feeling of family I get when I look at Katniss Everdeen, although we’ve never spoken again. 

Even if we were to, what would I say? 

I’m sorry for your loss? The moment has probably passed. 

You inspired me to want a family one day? Seems a little intense coming from a boy she hardly knows. Especially one that thinks she’s insanely beautiful and sweats buckets at the thought of talking to her. 

Thank you for shooting those dogs and saving my life? I mean, that one works, except for the aforementioned sweating buckets issue. 

I guess it’s too late now. 

The Mayor finishes up his speech, and turns back to us. It’s time to face one another, to shake hands as opponents. I turn to Katniss, take her hand in mine. I try then, to say the things I always wanted to say to her. Thank you for giving me hope, I try to transmit into her quicksilver eyes, beyond her passive expression. Her hand is small and calloused and I grip it tighter, want to hold it in my own forever. 

And then I realise. My hope might be gone, but hers is not. I can tell by the determined tilt of her chin. Hers shouldn’t be. She had once made me safe, faced down a pack for me. Surely there’s something I can do for her. 

The Games is so much about perception, about manipulation and counter manipulation. That’s my family’s dance. I’m good at it. I’m barely aware enough to release Katniss’s hand, granting my wish to hold hers longer, my mind already spinning possibilities. 

Whether she wants one or not, Katniss Everdeen just got herself an ally.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a one-shot based off the above prompt! 
> 
> A little what if scenario for you to read. 
> 
> Thanks to @rosegardeninwinter!


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